Part 5

A rare and interesting form of lamp, one of the oldest, has a bulb with an opening in the top, the edges of the opening rounded off, and a corrugated stand; these are small, and were used for nightlights. I own three, one of them with a handle, and a dish beneath it, evidently used for carrying the light from room to room (see illustration, page 27); such as these would, perhaps, be the old “mortars,” or night-light holders, for a cake of wax and a wick.

XV. COMPORTS, SWEETMEAT, JELLY AND CUSTARD GLASSES

COMPORTS

A comport is a large glass stand upon which (as the name signifies) other things may be carried together. A comport consists of a large or largish glass disc, flat, with a rim to it, upheld upon a thick stem--most often a shouldered stem, in shape resembling an inverted obelisk, rising from a domed and folded foot. An old comport is a rare possession; a modern glass cake-stand, such as confectioners use, is a near approach to it in shape. The use of a comport appears to have been to stand on a dining-table, bearing a number of glasses filled with jelly or sweetmeats.

SWEETMEAT GLASSES

Old sweetmeat glasses were used at table much as bon-bon dishes are now, to pass round at the dessert course; or to hand to ladies at other than mealtimes, during a call. Sweetmeat glasses proper resemble wine glasses, but have wide bowls, thick-lipped, unsuitable for drinking from: the shape of the stem resembled that of the stem of the comport. Often these glasses were engraved.

“CAPTAIN” OR “MASTER” GLASSES

In the centre of the comport, surrounded by sweetmeat glasses, a bigger, taller “captain” or “master” glass stood; its shape resembled that of the smaller glasses, and it probably held a store from which these could be replenished. “Captain” glasses are much sought for; the most valuable are Waterford cut, the West-End price for one being now £8.

The bowls are usually varieties of the double ogee; the moulded stem is usually high-shouldered, inverted obelisk in shape, but air-spiral and cotton-white spiral stems are found (see illustration, page 1). A cut stem is usually knopped, but may be plain round, except for the cutting.

JELLY GLASSES

Jelly glasses are small, low, moulded or pressed, almost stemless, on domed or high instep feet; sometimes the bowls are plain blown or moulded, sometimes cut, sometimes hexagonal.

CUSTARD GLASSES

The most desirable custard glasses have handles. Some of them have square bases. Some of them resemble smallish wine glasses with corrugated stems. Most of them are decorated by pressed or incised lines.

XVI. SALT CELLARS, PEPPER BOXES, SUGAR BASINS, ETC.

The “Sunderland” salt cellars have already been mentioned (see page 39); moulded or cut-glass salt cellars are much less rare. The oldest of these seem to be those with oval bowls, in the Queen Anne silver style, with diamond-shape bases on short stems, everywhere cut. Some salt cellars have turned-over tops, much broader than the rest of the vessel; there are Bristol striped salt cellars of this shape. In some cut salt cellars the lines run horizontally. Victorian salt cellars were very heavy and rather plain.

Pepper boxes of glass are round, or octagonal, plain or cut, with or without a foot; holes are pierced in the top, there is a glass stopper at the bottom; sometimes the base is square and the pierced top is of silver. In some cases the vessel was used for castor-sugar.

Sugar-basins exist in numbers, and in plain, cut, opal, and coloured glass, notably in the Bristol blue. There are covered sugar basins; when these are large and cut they are known as sugar bowls. A special type is the _caddy sugar-basin_ (see page 27); this was usually of straight-sided form, blown, moulded, or cut, or both moulded and cut; it stood in the central receptacle of a tea-caddy, within the round hole between the two rectangular boxes which held green tea and black tea respectively. These basins are much more seldom met with than the caddies are. Often they are very heavy, and nearly always they are very ornamental. Bristol opal-glass sugar and slop basins are met with; in this glass complete tea-sets were made, including tea poys or glass tea-caddies. In the Willett collection was “a Bristol glass teapot and cover, with flowers in colours.” A glass teapot is rarely found.

XVII. MIRRORS, GLASS PICTURES, GLASS KNOBS

Mirrors more properly come within the category of furniture, but they largely consist of glass, of course, so that some notice of them is needed here.

In 1688 the art of casting large plates of glass began to be carried on in France. In 1663 the art had been patented in England, but for smaller sizes. One French mirror, now in the Louvre at Paris, was valued at £6000 in 1791. Glass used to be a costly product; the chief reason why old prints are usually found trimmed of their margins was that glass to frame with them was so dear.

Old _mirrors_ with bevelled edges have the bevel flattish, nearly in the plane of the glass; the bevel follows the shape of the frame, but is irregular at its inner outlines, because the grinding of the bevel was done by hand. Modern bevels, done by machinery, are almost mathematically exact, and make an acuter angle with the frame than the old bevels do. Also the silvering at the back of old mirrors differs from the method of silvering now used; the difference is much more easy to recognize by the eye than to describe, but there is a kind of granulation in the older backing.

_Glass pictures_ are of two kinds; one in which the painting, in oil-colours, was done upon the glass itself, usually at the back of it; and another in which the paint was laid on coarsely behind a print which, rubbed very thin at the back of the paper, had been affixed to the back of the glass. This second kind is the more numerously met with; also it is the most counterfeited. Age may be known, however, by the curving, bubbly surface of the glass. A third kind, consisting of a mosaic of bits of glass, so laid together in cement as to form a picture is rare, even in modern examples.

Glass _knobs_ to handsome sideboards were used in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and have continually been used in Yorkshire, for dressers, since then; old glass knobs are usually moulded, but some are cut, though the round, uncut shape was the most convenient for handling. Glass door-knobs are found.

XVIII. OLD PASTE, GLASS BEADS, AND TAWS

PASTE

All artificial “stones” used in jewellery are glass--glass variously shaped, cut, and coloured--but “_old paste_” is glass not coloured; though it may be backed with coloured foil, which shows a tint through the glass. Old-paste collecting is, therefore, a branch of old-glass collecting, and cannot be ignored in this book.

White paste is usually a substitute for diamonds; the carefully made and cut old paste or strass (the French name for it, adopted under Louis V, when the best paste was made) came very near the look of diamonds. Paste or strass is glass of a very hard, bright kind, cut in the way in which diamonds are cut, and mounted in the metals and styles which usually go with diamond jewellery.

Behind these brilliant bits of cut-glass, silver or tinfoil was put, so that light falling through the glass should be refracted and reflected back, as it is in natural crystals such as diamonds. Time affects the colour of this foil and thus gives a softer beauty to the effect. Old paste is more beautiful than new paste for another reason, too--being old glass it has the tints of old glass so often referred to in this book. Some paste seems to have been made at Bristol, for “Bristows” or “Bristol diamonds” some of it is called.

The older paste ornaments have the bits of glass set separately, each setting for each bit separate though touching each other, and therefore there is much metal shown in the settings; this applies to the seventeenth-century paste. Later, near the end of the eighteenth century and afterwards, as now, the bits of glass were sunk within a continuous grooved or hollow setting, each bit held in place by a small claw or raised clip of metal soldered on to the general groove. The setting for white paste was usually silver: coloured pastes were often set in gold, silver gilt, pinchbeck, bronze, and sometimes in pewter.

Paste consisting of very small pieces is preferable to the larger varieties. “Diamond” paste is oftener found than “emerald,” “ruby,” or “sapphire” paste. A certain form of paste (not truly paste) is found in jewellery set with glass cut and silvered at the back, as if it were a bit of looking-glass.

A test for the age of paste is the presence of scratches on its surface, and of dimness brought about by chemical action of the air. The scratches are oftenest found at the edges and flats of the facets.

GLASS BEADS AND TAWS

Glass _beads_ have been made ever since the making of glass was known, in Egypt, Europe, and here. The general tests of age given in this book may be applied to them. Glass _taws_ or marbles made for boys’ games, or for a game called “solitaire” which used to be fashionable--a kind of “patience” game with glass taws--used to show the characteristics of air-spiral or cotton-white or coloured spiral stems.

XIX. GENERAL HINTS AND WARNINGS

INSCRIBED GLASSES

A collector should not miss an opportunity of buying an inscribed glass cheaply: for instance, a naval rummer, engraved with a cutlass, a dove with the olive-branch, and “Our brave Allies” for 4s. But fine engraved and inscribed modern glasses, imitating though not reproducing exactly the old ones, are on sale in curio-shops.

ROSES, OAK-LEAVES, BIRDS, AND BUTTERFLIES ON GLASS

Eventually any glass with roses, rosebuds, and a bird or butterfly on it will rank as “Jacobite”; glasses with oak-leaves will also be thought symbolical of Boscobel. Other such emblems will be discovered, or are alleged; for instance, the aconite or monk’s-hood flower, considered as an aspiration for another General Monk, who might restore the Stuart line.

OLD GLASSES “ENGRAVED UP”

Jacobite, Williamite, and Hanover or Trafalgar glasses being in great demand, _ingenious persons take a real old wine glass, goblet, or rummer, that is plain and innocent at the time, and engrave it_ with Jacobite emblems or “Bonny Prince Charlie’s” head, or William of Orange on horseback, or “Trafalgar,” or “Nile.” As a rule the evident newness, roughness, and lack of “wear” of such added engraving condemn it, to the eye and to the finger; but very ingenious persons use chemicals, or mud, or attrition, in order to disguise the whitish-grey tint of newly engraved glass; if part of the engraving be “buffed” up--that is, polished till it is bright, transparent, and not the tint of ground glass (see centre of rose, page 70), detection becomes more difficult.

THE COLLECTOR’S INSTINCT

But after a while the “instinct” of a collector comes into play to protect him against these and other frauds. He cannot exactly reason out and state why an offered piece is “wrong,” but he feels that it is not right; which means that the “altogether” of the glass suggests to his subconscious mind something which, though not expressed, is a good reason for not buying the glass. But this “instinct” only comes after much practice in collecting, and repeated turning of pages for reference, in a book such as this; a collector’s books should not be read once and then laid aside; they should be referred to on every occasion, even after the “instinct” has begun to stir.

LIKELIHOOD AND IMPROBABILITY

Extraordinary chances come to the “picking-up” collector, I know, but he does well to keep in mind the probability or the unlikelihood of his “find” being real. It is unlikely that he should more than once happen upon a Jacobite glass, for example; and again, if he sees a fine “Trafalgar” glass exhibited in a small jeweller’s shop, with no other glass at all or any other “curios,” the probability is that some fraudulent person has planted that false glass there, in what is a likely place to attract and deceive a collector who “picks up.”

THE ABSOLUTE FRAUDS

Old English and Irish glass has _a soft and mellow tone, both of look and sound; it has a calm, respectable, honest appearance, as of quality and honesty combined. Fitness for its purpose, good workmanship, some quaintness perhaps, but not much fantasy, are visible in it_; if it is decorated, _the decoration has been done well, but without lavish artistic imagination_.

Now about the forgeries of it there is _something hard and fast, an appearance too shiny and shining, and a rigidity of copying_. Seldom are even two old glasses belonging to a set quite alike, but the forgeries are exact replicas by the hundred. See one, you see them all; but see one real old glass, you notice differences in it from all others. _Forged glass, recently made, is “buffed” or polished on the wheel all over its surface; old glass was never buffed, and its polish rather resembles that of old furniture due to “elbow grease”_--the polish comes of long washing, wiping, and drying.

I have already described the differences of tint. Forged glasses are clumsy imitations in this, for the forgers do not try to give the old dark tints--they use lead that is not so impure as the old lead was, and therefore produces less visible oxide.

The _cutting of old glass, done by hand, produced and displays irregularities_; so does modern cutting. But _the old irregularities were due to a lack of machine-like precision, and were natural, accidental irregularities: the modern irregularities are (so to speak) mechanical, and obviously due to haste and cheapness of production_. Labour and time were no great matters with the old workmen; the counterfeit work is obviously done with the minimum of labour and time.

Modern English-made glass has often a good ring when flicked; foreign-made frauds on the old have not, or have it seldom.

THE “MODERN ANTIQUE”

Much of the glass sold in the smaller curio-shops as “antique” was not made to deceive: it is the offering of it in such places which intends fraud. Most English-made reproductions of old glass in shape and cutting were not intended by the manufacturer to delude a collector, but to attract the ordinary buyer for table use or decorative use; one who is not a collector but “likes something that looks old-fashioned,” as he says.

Pawnbrokers’ and jewellers’ shops are stocked with what is called in the trade “the modern antique”; other examples of this are the cheap, hasty, and obvious copies of miniatures of famous beauties set in new paste frames and sold for a few shillings. In pawnshops and ordinary glass-shop windows a collector sees spiral-stem wine glasses made for modern use and not intended to deceive; they are a kind of tawdrily ornamental hock glass, embodying some modern designer’s idea of what is beautiful; they correspond with no antique shape of bowl, the stems are very thin and fragile, the feet are as small as or smaller than the rim of the bowl, and the spirals are parti-coloured and “tight.” No collector need be taken in by such as these--they were not made to take him in, they are ordinary articles of modern manufacture and daily commerce.

So are the white glass bowls, tazzas, centre-pieces, vases, “specimen glasses,” etc., elaborately cut, perhaps engraved also, and meant for modern tables and mantelpieces. These are copies of the fine old ware simply because the old ware affords good models, and the information given in chapter ii of this book will enable a collector to recognize the modernity of these honest imitations, even when they are found (as they often are) in a shop supposed to purvey antiques.

OUT-OF-THE-WAY PIECES

I do not say that very unusual and out-of-the-way pieces of old glass should be avoided; as the collecting of glass increases, many rare old things will be brought out of cupboards and sold in shops. But I do say that, as a rule, a collector should feel suspicious of any piece not resembling those which are pictured in books like this, or those seen in museum collections. Thus a tall, bulky goblet engraved with a portrait of William Pitt or Wellington, and inscribed accordingly, if it is offered for 30s., say, is highly suspicious, to say the least of it; and the safer course is to refuse apparent bargains of the kind.

FAKED JACOBITE GLASSES, ETC.

This applies even more to the pseudo-Jacobite, Williamite, Nelson, and other famous glasses which are offered. They may be old glasses “engraved up,” in which case the only mode of detection is the quality, finish and tint of the engraving. They may be English-made modern glass, of the right ring and the old way of manufacture; in which case the test of tint in the glass itself may be added to the test of the engraving. In either case the engraving may too closely reproduce an original glass; it is seldom that two old glasses of this type exactly resemble each other in the position of the various emblems, portraits, and so on: for example, the word _Fiat_ is hardly ever found in exactly the same place on two real old glasses. If the pseudo-Jacobite or other engraved glass fails to respond to the characteristics of high instep or domed foot, tint, ring, etc., or any of these, it should be rejected.

FAKED SPIRAL GLASSES

Fraudulent air-spiral or cotton-spiral-stemmed glasses, not engraved or inscribed, are the fraud most often offered to a collector: in addition to the other tests mentioned, _the test of the skill and quality of the spiral itself can be used_ in this case. The _counterfeits show spirals which are meagre, irregular, tight, or the wrong colour; they do not fill up the stem, or exactly swell out to fill up the knops; in the cotton-white there are defects resembling dropped threads in a piece of linen, or missed stitches in a piece of lace_. I possess one excellently twisted air-spiral forgery, a simple cable, which might deceive if the plain glass around it forming the rest of the stem were not so thick and so distinct as to suggest that the spiral was made first and the plain glass placed around it afterwards; _the old spirals, air, cotton-white or coloured, were twisted at the time of and in the actual making of the whole stem_. Modern spiral stems are often writhen or ridged on the surface, too; which means that the twisting of the stem has been done with less than the old amount of skill. In short, the making of spiral stems is a lost art, not recovered even by the assiduous forgers, up to the present.

_If a spiral revolves upwards from right to left_--the right to the left of the person looking at it--_reject it_; this defect was a feature of the earlier forgeries, but the proper direction of the upward twist (from left to right) is now used in these fakes.

The old cut stems are more easily imitated: _with these a test is the absence of all trace of a pontil-mark_. In many old cut glasses the finger feels a distinct depression, usually circular, which shows where the old pontil-mark was cut away. In some forgeries, made by moulding, not by blowing, the pontil-mark is imitated, but so grossly that it ought not to deceive.

SHAM WINE COOLERS AND FINGER BOWLS

Counterfeit eared wine coolers and beautifully cut counterfeit finger bowls are on the curio market; the usual tests should detect these. Imitation Bristol blue, and violet glass is offered, but it is not the right blue, which passes from a purple in the thick, to a sea-blue in the thin, parts when held to the light; or not the right violet, in which the same varying of colour is evident. Dozens of fraudulent white and violet finger bowls, elaborately cut, are on the market; but it is the rarest thing to find more than five or six left of any set of old finger bowls.

OLD DUTCH GLASS

Glassware of the seventeenth and eighteenth century made in the Lowlands, whether at Liège or Amsterdam, is known over here as “old Dutch.” Collectors will do wisely to study this ware, whether for the purpose of rejecting or acquiring it. Most collectors of English and Irish glass reject it at once; they rightly say that _when thin it is too light-weight, bubbly, flashy, flat and short of ring, and when thick too smeary of tint and too clumsy to be first class; and often the engraving is poor and ugly_. Indeed, there is _something unfinished and unworkmanlike about it_, compared with the craftsmanship put into English and Irish old glass; just as there is about Dutch-made furniture of William and Mary and Queen Anne date, compared with English-made furniture of the Chippendale period and style. _There is something unsatisfactory in the look, shape, and proportions; it seems to lack completeness and fitness._

In the stemmed glasses, however, _the Dutch air spirals are excellently done--except where they join the foot of the glass, sometimes; and the cotton-white spirals are hardly inferior to the English except in the greyness of the colour_. For this reason, and also because the number of collectors of old glass increases, Dutch wine glasses on spiral stems go up in price at London auctions nowadays, and a rose glass or other pretty, well-engraved piece of Flemish or Dutch origin may be worth acquiring: there are collectors here of the Holland ware already, and there will be more as English and Irish ware of the kind becomes more difficult to find and expensive to buy. A spirit bottle, decanter, goblet, or other piece of Dutch glass that is engraved with armorials or dates, or names or legends, is not to be disdained, therefore; nor is any unusual piece that is quaintly quirked, fluted, purfled, and bossed.

CHIPPED OR BROKEN PIECES

It is sometimes worth while cheaply to acquire a chipped or even a broken piece of old glass, if it is very rare in kind, form, or purpose. Chipped feet of wine glasses can be ground again, but it is hardly worth while; when the foot is almost all gone, a metal substitute can be made for it, but that is hardly worth while. I know of a Jacobite glass with a big piece out of the engraved portion cemented in again; the price of the glass is £40 all the same; but as a rule it is not worth while to acquire chipped or broken articles of old glass.

“TOUT PASSE, TOUT CASSE, TOUT LASSE”

The French proverb tells us that everything passes, everything breaks, everything wearies, at last. But the collector knows better than that; he prevents old works of art and craft from passing altogether; he keeps them safe from breaking, and he never wearies of adding to them or studying them; as I hope this book may enable many a collector to do.

INDEX

INDEX

ABSOLUTE frauds, 97

Air spiral, 41, 50

Air-spiral stems, 50, 51

BALUSTER stems, 40, 46, 47

Beads, 93

Beer glasses, 60

Belfast-made glass, 18

Bell bowl, 56

Blown ware, 26

Bohemian glass, 13

“Boot” glasses, 74

Bottles, 76

Bowl shapes, 56, 59

Bowls, 79

Bristol cut-glass, 31 coloured glass, 35, 36 opal glass, 35

Butterfly, engraved, 20

CADDY sugar-basin, 27, 88

Candlesticks, 60, 81

“Captain” glasses, 85

“Central tube” stem, 53, 55, 66

Champagne glasses, 53, 61

Chipped or broken pieces, 103

Cider glasses, 61

Coaching glasses, 62, 63

Coins in stems, 7, 47

Collar in stem, 46

Collectable articles, 6

Collector’s instinct, 96 range, 11

Coloured glass, 35 spirals, 54

Communion vessel, 10

Comports, 84

Cork-made glass, 17

Cotton-white spirals, 53

Corrugated stems, 50

Custard glasses, 87

Cut-glass, 29 stems, 55

DECANTERS, 77

Defects of quality, 20, 21

“Diamond” cutting, 30

Dome-foot, 41, 42

Double ogee bowl, 58

Drawn bowl, 49, 56

“Drawn” stems, 49